Chapter 5

It's not that I think she's being dishonest it's just that I can't imagine anyone hiring a bodyguard to protect me. No brag, but I'm more than capable of taking care of myself.

Still, it prompts the question of why and who. That's something I intend to find out.

It does give me a bit of disappointment. If she were just a woman who'd appeared in my life out of coincidence then I could enjoy this a lot more. Knowing she was sent here to find me and is determined to do her job throws a little bit of a wet blanket on things. Is her attraction for me completely genuine?

And fuck, when did I become the man who couldn't tell when a woman was genuinely into me? I must really be off my game.

Rock took a seat on a wicker couch on the lanai of his house. He'd been mulling it over for two days and had finally reached a decision on his course of action. He pulled out his cell phone and placed a call. It rang half a dozen times before there was an answer.

"Yes?"

"Severin? Rock—I mean Conner."

"I'm surprised to hear from you."

"I'm surprised to be calling."

"If you are then it is of import."

"It is. At least to me. I need to meet with you and Andre. And Augustus, if possible. Can you arrange it?"

"Possibly. Can you tell me what it's about?"

Rock quickly told him what he'd learned from Jazz. Severin responded immediately when Rock finished. "When and where?"

"Wherever you choose and as soon as possible."

"Give me two hours."

"I'll be waiting."

Rock ended the call and stared out over the landscape. Few people outside of the man he'd just spoken with and those he'd requested to meet with were aware of his history, or his accomplishments. For the majority of the Seven he maintained the facade of the affable shifter. Strong and capable, dependable and loyal, he was known to be intelligent but was hardly viewed as someone with the mental capabilities to achieve what he'd accomplished as Rockwell Burns.

For someone to hire a bodyguard for him meant they had to know all about him and that made him uncomfortable. He needed to consult with his friends to determine the best course of action. And he needed to do it before he let himself get in any deeper with Jazz.

Which reminded him. He needed to get the full scoop from her on who hired her and why. He hadn't pressed her for details at the gym, but then his attention had been on other things at the time.

He picked up his phone again and called her.

"Hey. You busy?"

"Not too busy for you."

"Then how about coming over to my house?"

"What's the address?"

"Want me to text it to you?"

"Just tell me. I'll be there in an hour."

Rock gave her the address and signed off. Now to wait and see if the pieces of the puzzle would come together.

*****

Fred Mindleton was not a man accustomed to being kept waiting. The fact that he had been waiting for over three minutes had him ill-tempered. His phone buzzed and he stabbed at the speaker button angrily. "What?"

"Mr. Barnette is here, sir."

"Send him in."

Mindleton didn't bother to stand as the door opened. The man who entered had an appearance that made a many people nervous. Well over six feet, he had the build of a serious bodybuilder, a shaved head, and ink-work that covered nearly half his body. The flat black eyes of a shark stared from beneath his heavy brow in unblinking fashion, set in a face whose lines announced that he was a man unaccustomed to smiling. A heavy scar bisected his right eyebrow from hairline to eyelid.

People often made the mistake of underestimating Harry the Hammer Barnette, judging him on his appearance to be as deficient in mental capacity as he was endowed in physical. Fred Mindleton was not one of those people. Nor was he one who feared Barnette.

There was a time he would have, twenty years ago. Before Asha had turned him. Now, as a vampire there was little he feared. Despite the exultation being a vampire gave him, aside from Asha no one knew. Mindleton kept his secrets just that. Secrets.

His habit had proven valuable after the fiasco at Asha's estate in the Hamptons. Preternaturals were under constant surveillance now. All he'd worked for could have been threatened by the knowledge he was one of them.

No, he wasn't about to reveal that secret.

"You're late." He looked up at Barnette.

"I'm here." Barnette shrugged.

Fred slid a thumb drive across the desk. "Got a job for you."

Barnette picked up the drive and stuffed it into the pocket of his leather vest. "Give me the lowdown." He lowered himself to a chair in front of the desk.

"It's on the drive."

"You know me, boss," Barnette said with a rare grin that was almost more frightening than his stoic countenance as it didn't reach his eyes. "I like a Reader's Digest condensed version to whet my appetite."

Fred allowed himself a chuckle. "Very well. Rockwell Conner Burns. He has something I want and is reluctant to part with it."

"You want him dead or just compliant?"

"Compliant."

"Any existing complications I should know of?"

"Not that I am aware. He owns a gym with an ex-fighter, Ed Nash—"

"No shit?" Barnette cut in. "He still alive? I remember watching him fight when I was a kid. Man had fists like pile drivers."

"Yes, he lives. And operates a gym in Kissimmee, Florida. Where Burns is masquerading as a trainer."

"You want something from a muscle head?"

"As you will read on the drive, Burns is as much of an enigma as yourself. He holds a number of patents that are generating millions of dollars annually."

"And something that could generate more."

"Exactly."

"So, this Burns. He's a fighter?"

"Yes."

"He pack heat?"

"No. There are no weapons registered in his name."

"He have a posse? A gang?"

"From what we have learned, he has few friends, is something of a womanizer, and spends most of his time either at the gym or at home."

"So, this gym. Busy place? Lots of trainers?"

"Aside from Burns, only one. A recent addition. A woman. Jasmine Boudreaux."

"Jazz?" Barnette's eyebrows rose.

"You're familiar with this woman?"

"Let's just say that our paths have crossed a time or two." Barnette fingered the scar on his forehead as he answered. "What's she doing working there? She's a bounty hunter."

"And bodyguard, it seems."

Barnette grunted. "Yeah, on rare occasions."

"Will this woman be a problem?"

"Hell no." Barnette heaved himself out of the chair. "In fact, having her there makes it even more appealing. She and I have an old score to settle."

"Just make sure you don't allow personal matters to interfere with the job."

"When have I ever?"

Mindleton didn't reply and Barnette turned away, stopping when he reached the door. "Be in touch, boss."

After he'd gone, Mindleton picked up the phone. "I want a detailed dossier on Jasmine Boudreaux."

He hadn't considered the woman to be a significant factor, but if she and Barnette had crossed paths before and if, as he suspected by Barnette's actions, she was responsible for the scar, then he wanted to know more about her so he could access any potential threats she might pose to the operation.

Barnette climbed onto his motorcycle and revved the engine. Fate had just handed him an opportunity he'd been waiting on for three long years. As he pulled out into traffic, he let his mind take him back.

He'd been tracking a bail jumper for three weeks, the hunt taking him from LA to South Carolina before the prey had gone to ground in a small wooden house in Lancaster with a worn-out prostitute-turned-waitress and her two kids.

Barnette had set up surveillance, getting to know the routine of everyone in the house. Once he had the schedule down pat, he made plans to make his move. On Wednesdays the woman worked the late shift at a local bar. The kids spent the night with their grandmother, leaving the bail jumper alone.

He waited until almost midnight when things were quiet, and snuck around the side of the house. He could see the guy sitting in an old vinyl recliner watching television and drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels. It was going to be easier than he thought.

Barnette made his way to the back door, easing up the two rickety steps. He'd just reached for the handle of the screen door when the unmistakable feel of the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of his head.

"Easy, hoss," a voice he'd never forget whispered.

Barnette raised his hands and turned slowly, looking down the long silencer attached to the Glock, to Jazz's face.

"You're encroaching on my territory, Barnette."

"Seems to me it's the other way around."

"Uh-huh," she smirked at him. "Besides, you owe me."

"The fuck I do! You ran out on me, you bitch! With all the money."

"My money."

"Half of it was mine. We worked that job together."

"Way I see it, your half was payment."

"For?"

"For me finding you in my bed with your dick up that blonde's ass."

"Man's gotta have some relief, Jazz, and you sure as shit weren't putting out."

"Damn skippy. You cheated on me."

"Then why wait until after the job? You didn't say shit when you caught me."

"We were in the middle of a job, you jackass. One of us had to stay focused. And it sure as hell wasn't you."

"Fine, so I fucked around on you and you took the money. That doesn't have shit to do with now."

"Oh yes it does. You haven't come close to paying off that debt."

"Oh yeah, I have. Now put that damn gun away. You know you're not going to shoot me."

"Don't put it to the test," she warned as he took a step toward her.

"I mean it, Jazz. Put it the fuck down or I'll have to take it from you."

"Not gonna happen."

He made a move for her. She had one split second to decide. Shoot or not. She chose not, but did flip the gun in the air, catching it by the barrel to bring it around in a hammer strike.

The blow caught him in the forehead over his right eye and ripped a slice open clear down to his eye.

Barnette howled like a wounded buffalo, his right eye blinded by blood. His howl alerted the target inside. Shots came from the back window, peppering the ground around them. Jazz grabbed Barnette by the arm and dragged him around the corner of the house. He slumped down, holding one hand to his head.

"Stay here," she whispered and disappeared back around the side of the house.

That was the last he saw of her until she appeared with the bail jumper, cuffed and bloody.

She knelt down in front of Barnette. "Now we're even," she said and patted him on the shoulder.

He watched her walk away, the captured target in front of her, and swore. She might think it was over but it wasn't, not by a long shot.

And now he found himself being handed Jazz on a golden platter, an unexpected perk. Haul in the doctor for Mindleton, and get even with Jazz Boudreaux all at the same time. Life was good.

*****

Jazz drove through the massive iron gates, watching in her side mirror as the gates swung closed behind her. When Rock had suggested she come to his place as they left the gym, she'd jumped at the chance and was following him home.

Since their night in the gym, they'd had no time alone. The gym was packed from open to close with fighters preparing for a qualification round the upcoming week. Most nights when she left Rock was still working with a fighter. She'd learned a lot about Rock from watching him train the fighters. Most importantly was that he was a fighter who fought the primary battle on the mental level. While he was fast and strong and had excellent technique, on those factors alone he could have been beaten by a number of guys. But when his superior intellect and strategy was factored in, he was unbeatable.

Jazz was one hundred percent certain he could take the title if he chose to enter the competition. But he didn't seem interested. She wondered if it had anything to do with his other work and the life he'd left behind.

He didn't talk about it, and they had little time to talk anyway. A couple of stolen kisses and quick grabs were all they'd managed until now.

From what she'd seen so far of his home, he lived in a freaking swamp. On both sides of the drive thick foliage pressed in tight, forming a wall of jungle, dense and seemingly impenetrable.

The drive wound through the jungle for nearly half a mile. She was expecting to see some shanty shack any moment. But as she rounded another turn the house came into view and her mouth dropped open.

The man definitely knew how to live. The house was massive. Like something out of a magazine. He pulled up in front of the house and stopped and she pulled in behind him. The drive where they parked was covered, due to an enormous terrace from the second story that stretched out at least sixty feet in each direction.

He was standing outside the front door when she pulled up.

"Wow," she said as she got out of her car. "You must make a hell of a lot more than I do working for Ed."

Rock laughed. "I doubt it. Come on in."

He didn't pull out a key, but stepped up to the front door, keyed in a combination on a keypad, then moved his face close to a small retinal scanner.

The door swung open on its own and she followed him inside. The interior was as impressive as the exterior. "Okay." She stopped, looking at the twin curved staircases that led to the second floor. "I have to ask. Just what the hell did you invent that affords you all this?"

"What do you know about nanotechnology?"

"Uh, nothing."

"Then this could take a while. Let's grab a beer and go to my lab."

"You have a...lab?" She fell in step with him.

"Yeah."

"As in test tubes, bubbling stuff and arcing electrical stuff?"

"Ah no, that would be Dr. Frankenstein."

Jazz laughed. "Okay, color me ignorant when it comes to this stuff. Hey, nice kitchen!"

"Thanks." Rock grabbed a couple of beers and handed her one. "Come on. My mad scientist place is out back."

Jazz followed him out onto an enormous terrace, down a tiled and lighted walkway to another house, this one smaller but still quite impressive. Rock went through another identification process and the door opened.

The lights turned on at a voice command from him. "Lights," he said as he entered and held the door for her.

Jazz's mouth dropped open as she got her first look around. It truly was like something from a science fiction film. One vast room housed equipment and computers she couldn't begin to identify.

"Holy shit, mad scientist is right. What is all this stuff?"

Rock grinned and wandered over to a computer sitting beside an unusual square apparatus. "This is an AFM."

"Which means what in science for dummies?"

"Atomic Force Microscope. Essentially the ATF is a high-res type of scanning probe microscope with demonstrated resolution of fractions of a nanometer. We use it to image and manipulate atoms and structures on many different surfaces."

"Ooookay." She drew the word out long and slow, unclear of the significance of what he'd said.

Rock chuckled. "It's like this. The atom at the apex of the tip sort of 'senses' individual atoms on the underlying surface when it forms incipient chemical bonds with each atom. Now because these chemical interactions ever so subtly alter the vibration frequency of the tip, they can be detected and mapped."

"Still lost," she admitted and gestured to another machine. "What's that one?"

"That's an MC Implantation Simulator. A 3D ion-implantation simulator for the modeling of ion-stopping and implant ranges in amorphous and crystalline materials. It provides bi-directional integration allowing modeling of the implantation process for all available impurity/target material combinations and in arbitrary geometries."

"Enough," she said with a laugh. "I'm going to make a guess that your explanation of the rest of this stuff will make about as much sense as that did, right?"

"Probably."

"Okay then, let me just ask this...what exactly do you do with all this stuff?"

"You know, just the usual mad scientist stuff."

"In other words, none of my business." She took no offense at his disinclination to discuss his work.

"Not at all. It's just...well, what I do is hard to explain to a layman, and probably pretty uninteresting."

She reached out to put her hand on his arm. "I'm interested."

His smile faded and he stepped back from her touch. "Because it's part of the job."

His words stung. "You know better than that."

"Do I? How? You told me yourself you'd do whatever you had to, to protect the man you're assigned to safeguard. How do I know this isn't all just part of your job? Which, by the way, you never did fully explain. Just who exactly hired you and what are you protecting me from?"

His questions were hard ones, and not something she wanted to answer. He might think she was nuts and kick her out. Then not only would she fail her mission, but she'd lose him. And even though it'd only been a few weeks, she'd developed a strong attachment to Rock that went beyond sexual attraction or friendship. She feared she was falling in love with him, something that was more frightening to her than facing down a dozen armed men.

"Well?" he asked.

Her movement was one of a fighter loosening, head tilting to one side, then the other, while shoulders rose and fell, one at a time. She gave her shoulders one more roll as she turned away from him and wandered over to the door.

"Those aren't easy answers, Rock."

"I'm a smart guy. I think I can follow the gist of almost anything."

She barked a laugh. "I have no doubt. And that's not the problem."

"Then what is?"

She cut a look over her shoulder at him. "You believing me. Or getting really pissed."

He studied her for a long time. Her posture spoke of tension that was mirrored in the set of her jaw. Her eyes told another tale. One of fear. Rock couldn't imagine Jazz fearing anything. She seemed unshakable and fearless.

Her uncertainty and fear touched him in an unexpected way. Tenderness rose to the forefront. "Jazz." He hurried to put his arms around her and pull her close. "I'll believe you. And I won't be pissed."

"You say that now," she murmured against his shoulder.

"Trust me."

She pulled back and stared into his eyes. "Trust isn't all that easy for me."

"Me either. But I'll try if you will."

Rock saying he'd try meant more to her than a sweet lie. Knowing that trust was a difficult issue for him brought a common element to the table. They were alike in so many ways and so different in others. In this they seemed to share a common bond.

"Could we go outside?"

He nodded and released her. Together they left the lab. Once outside, Rock took her hand and led her to a large pergola, overlooking a dark lake. "Have a seat," he offered, gesturing to one of the padded lounges.

"I need to stand." She walked over to the railing, looking out at the lake, and watching the light play on the water.

He stood beside her, silent and waiting. Jazz stared at the water for a long time before speaking, trying to formulate her thoughts.

"Like I said before, by trade I'm a bounty hunter and part-time bodyguard if the money is right. I've been doing it for a while. I've seen the best and worst in people, been forced to fight and to run. I've been hurt, and I've hurt people. Shot them. I always try to wound. But I won't hesitate to pull the trigger. And I have—more times than I care to remember.

"I've never done drugs. Not a big drinker and I'm not much of the imaginative type." She paused to look at him. "I'm saying this because... I guess to let you know that I'm not the kind of person taken to flights of fancy and I've never been into the whole new-age mumbo-jumbo stuff. I'm just a regular gal with her feet on the ground.

"But...before I came to Florida, something happened. I'd been tracking this bail jumper and caught up with him in Fresno, holed up in a house with two other guys. At least I thought there were two others. I snuck in and got the drop on the three of them but things got ugly and I had to make a run for it. That's when I discovered there was a fourth man in the house.

"No point in going into details about that. That one minute I was turning and dropping down to shoot, and the next I was in...another place."

"Another place?" Rock asked.

"Yeah. A castle or something. It had rock walls."

Rock's eyebrows rose. "And?"

"And I don't know how I got there, but god as my witness, I was...transported to a castle somewhere by a woman who... who told me about The Seven and what happened."

Rock's face hardened. "This is starting to sound suspiciously like a set-up."

"Not on my end. It was—well, it was pretty damn hard to take in what she said, but I realized that she was telling the truth. And she told me about you."

Rock blew out his breath and ran his hands back through his hair, a movement that drew Jazz's eyes to his arms and chest. Watching his biceps bunch and his chest rise brought a flush of desire that had her wishing to spend time with him doing something other than explaining why she was there to protect him.

He turned and walked away, taking a seat on one of the lounges and staring out at the sky. Jazz hesitated for a moment then walked over and sat down on the edge of his lounge. "You want me to go?"

Rock shook his head and leaned back, taking her hand. "I want to hear the rest of it."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I am." He pulled her down beside him, looping one arm over her shoulders.

"Okay. As I said, I found myself in this castle..."